I’m just going to hi-jack my own blog briefly to exercise my role of a director of the UK Oracle Users’ Group.
At the last directors’ meeting, we floated the idea of a special event (one-day) dedicated to Apex, and I volunteered my blog as a way of getting some idea from the user community about whether this would be a useful event, what sort of things they would like to hear about, the type of event they would want, and the degree of support.
As is usual with UKOUG special events, there would be scope for non-members to attend – so even if you aren’t a member, feel free to supply your thoughts.
Since Apex is often attributed to XE, I would expect it to be discussed as well and particularly Oracle’s plans on regular security patches and patchsets.
Comment by Alex Gorbachev — January 22, 2007 @ 4:22 am UTC Jan 22,2007 |
Oracle Application Express(Oracle ApEx) previously named Oracle HTML DB andalso known as “Project Marvel”. WebDB was introduced in 1999 with Oracle version 8i and this product eventually mature into Portal and ApEx.
So if you are after a browser based and wizard driven rapid application development(RAD) tool on the Oracle database, Oracle XE and ApEx, with no additional charge, is waiting for you
You may enjoy the qualities of a personal database like; Productivity, Ease of Use and Flexibility with the qualities of an enterprise database like; Security, Integrity, Scalability, Availability and Portability.
It is always very interesting to watch how especially people developing PL/SQL suprise(shock is more precise here) when they learn about what and how Oracle Application Express can do for them;
- ApEx is a FREE software development environment based on the Oracle database,
- ApEx allows fast development cycle to be achieved to create web based applications. For example this viewlet is a demostration on turning an excel sheet into a web application in seconds,
- There is an online development center, free to request a workspace and start building internet applications,
- There is a very active and effective Oracle forum with excellent contributions from ApEx code developers,
- This documentation is great to study with examples; Oracle® Database Express Edition 2 Day Plus Application Express Developer Guide Release 2.1
- ApEx can be installed on an Oracle 9.2 or higher database,
- The most well known two applications developed with ApEx are the AskTom with Thomas Kyte and Best Practice PL/SQL with Steven Feuerstein,
- Apex comes standard with Oracle XE database since XE console is also coded with ApEx, no need for another installation. The url used to access the XE database homepage typically is: http://localhost:8080/apex
- With Apex comes some great Demostration Applications which help understanding and some Oracle Magazine articles you may shortly start with examples and learn, Survey Application for example.
- Carl Backstrom’s Apex with Ajax Example Applications are excellent to follow,
- OTN Oracle Application Express Packaged Applications are waiting for you to download and use,
- Latest Application Express Release is 2.2.1, latest patch set to be applied to an 2.2 instance can be downloaded from MetaLink(Patch Number 5500033) and is about 2.6MB. Due out in the first half of 2007 it is announced that the next major release of Oracle Application Express will be version 3.0,
- Also it is pointed by Mr.Thomas Kyte that with new major releases of Oracle(11g is coming) new Express Edition releases also will be available with latest ApEx releases(3.0 is coming),
- ApEx is documentated well,
- And all these and more information on ApEx can be easily accessed from OTN ApEx Homepage;
So it has been over two years with ApEx for me, it was really love at first sight
And I know that any Oracle DBA and Developer will also love it and your post will be a great opportunity for the community to learn about ApEx,
Best regards.
Comment by H.Tonguç Yılmaz — January 22, 2007 @ 9:29 am UTC Jan 22,2007 |
Hi,
that are the topics I would be interested
-) More details about APEX 3.0, not just the high level overview which can be read in “Statement of Direction”
-) Pointing out some useful “jewels” in the htmldb_get.js and htmldb_html_elements.js
-) Pointing out some useful “jewels” in the APEX packages
-) Showing the power of the APEX repository views
-) Some advanced integration techniques like PL/PDF, flash charting, google/oracle maps, html editors
-) Success/Failed stories of APEX implementations – what worked/what didn’t work
-) Q&A session with the APEX developers
If it’s ok for you I will post a reference to this blog entry on my APEX blog http://inside-apex.blogspot.com/ and on the OTN APEX forum, so that you get more input from the APEX community.
Patrick
Comment by Patrick Wolf — January 22, 2007 @ 10:36 am UTC Jan 22,2007 |
I’d like to see a presentation where the architecture of APEX is discussed from the point of view of the database – not the GUI.
Something that shows the information flow in some details, from mod_plsql to the SP that builds the HTML page, illustrating the role of main “internal” metadata tables, how the SQL result sets become HTML tables, etcetera.
Best way – illustrating a simple example (eg an application that contains a single page that reads a single table).
That way I could build a model of how APEX works, using my SQL and PL/SQL knowledge.
Currently, I’m quite frankly lost in the GUI.
Comment by Alberto Dell'Era — January 22, 2007 @ 12:40 pm UTC Jan 22,2007 |
I (strongly) second Alberto’s proposal.
There is a lot of ‘point-and-click’ documentation for Apex.
What I sorely miss is a ‘concepts guide’ for Apex.
Something like the database concepts guide, or the (good old) forms30 reference guide, but for Apex then.
I mentioned this to Mike Hitchwa at the UKOUG last November, and he told me they were (thinking of) producing something like that. I haven’t seen it yet.
Also I’d be interested in other people’s experiences of moving a J2EE application to Apex.
Toon
Comment by Toon Koppelaars — January 22, 2007 @ 1:19 pm UTC Jan 22,2007 |
+1 on the concepts, from another baffled SQL*Plus user.
Comment by David Aldridge — January 22, 2007 @ 1:58 pm UTC Jan 22,2007 |
Just to correct a statement in a previous comment:
>> WebDB was introduced in 1999 with Oracle version 8i and this product eventually mature into Portal and ApEx.
WebDB was introduced in 1997 with Oracle 8i. WebDB did *not* eventually mature into Oracle Application Express. Oracle Application Express shares no code with WebDB. About the only similarity is they are both browser-based development and deployment tools.
Comment by Joel Kallman — January 22, 2007 @ 2:37 pm UTC Jan 22,2007 |
I would be very interested in PL/PDF, concepts, and integration with source control and automated testing tools.
Comment by Alistair Wall — January 22, 2007 @ 3:44 pm UTC Jan 22,2007 |
Hi all.
I, like Alberto, tried to find my way through the GUI, made the examples provided by Spendolini & others. And tried to find out the inner logic of packages, procedures and modules.
I, like David, am a baffled SQL*Plus user. (Die-hard SQL*Plus user, I would say).
So, add one vote to Alberto’s proposal.
Cheers.
Carlos.
Comment by CarlosAL — January 22, 2007 @ 5:14 pm UTC Jan 22,2007 |
I’d be interested in the administration side of things. We have developers currently getting very excited about the tool and the docs seem to do a good job in giving them what they need. What I would like is experience from the people supporting the infrastructure (database/web server), how dev/uat/production is best managed and other considerations such as the security side of things (how user/admin accounts are best handled).
Hope the event makes the calendar.
Regards
Neil
Comment by Neil — January 23, 2007 @ 9:25 am UTC Jan 23,2007 |
Anybody have any thoughts or opinions on Apex versus Oracle RoR (Ruby on Rails) from a development perspective?
Thanks.
Comment by SeanMacGC — January 23, 2007 @ 10:45 am UTC Jan 23,2007 |
The following topics would also be interesting
-) Versioning: CVS/Subversion/… integration
-) Best practice developing an bigger APEX application in a team
Comment by Patrick Wolf — January 23, 2007 @ 5:35 pm UTC Jan 23,2007 |
Hi Jonathan,
Excellent idea, I’d be happy to help in some way if was useful to you.
Comment by John Scott — January 25, 2007 @ 5:07 pm UTC Jan 25,2007 |
Hi,
I have used ApEx to develop customisations to Oracle Applications 11i. It is much quicker and lower cost than the more traditional Applications 11i development tools. What I like about ApEx is that it provides a robust framework that allows you to easily customise your application. For example, you can create a custom authentication scheme allowing seamless integration between ApEx and Oracle Apps 11i.
I spent a month trying to understand how ApEx worked at the database level and found the documentation not helpful in this respect.
Here are some of the things I would like to gain from an UKOUG ApEx event:
Get a more complete understanding of how ApEx works and the features available;
See how other users are using ApEx and the range of applications that have been developed;
Hear what applications and librarys are available to download and how this resource could be developed for the future.
Rod West
Comment by Rod West — January 28, 2007 @ 9:49 pm UTC Jan 28,2007 |
[...] to the day) I posted a note to see how much interest there would be if the UKOUG started up a Special Interest Group for ApEx. At the time there was some interest, though not a great [...]
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